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President Donald Trump and Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state, shake hands following their meeting with president-elect at Trump International Golf Club, November 20, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

As President Donald Trump's so-called Election Integrity Commission is set to meet for the second time on Tuesday in New Hampshire, voting rights groups are slamming the panel as a "stain on democracy" and urging resistance to any attempt by the Trump administration to "restrict access to the ballot under the guise of eliminating voter fraud."

"It's dirty work, but someone like Kobach is more than eager to do it." —Brian Tashman, ACLU"Our election process must be secure, fair, and transparent," said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, but Trump is using his "sham commission to spread the lie of rampant fraud as a Trojan Horse for voter suppression."

The meeting comes on the heels of a widely-pannedBreitbart column by the commission's vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who claimed that thousands of "out-of-staters" voted fraudulently in New Hampshire during the 2016 election.

Kobach argued the fraud was so rampant that it altered the outcome of the state's Senate race—and may have even been the decisive factor in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire victory.

But as Ari Berman and Pema Levy point out in Mother Jones, "there's a far simpler and less nefarious explanation for what happened: It's legal to use an out-of-state driver's license as ID at the polls in New Hampshire."

"The people who did so didn't drive in New Hampshire or own a car there or plan to reside permanently in the state," Berman and Levy added. "College students quickly came forward to say they'd voted legitimately using out-of-state licenses. (The places where out-of-state licenses were used most frequently were all college towns.) The fraud Kobach cited was nothing of the sort."

Brian Tashman, political researcher and strategist for the ACLU, argues that Kobach's wild claims ahead of the commission's second official meeting are evidence that he is "getting desperate" after failing in his failed attempts to obtain state voter data.

"This commission meeting is a farce." —Kristen Clarke, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

But, Tashman concludes, Kobach has made clear that he is more than willing to overreach in pursuit of his agenda.

Making matters worse, many observed, is the slate of speakers set to address the panel on Tuesday.

Drawing much of the ire was John Lott, a gun policy researcher who wrote what Berman and Levy call "the bible of the gun lobby." Lott will present his argument for requiring prospective voters to pass a background check.

"This commission meeting is a farce. It is astounding that this Commission has lined up a full day of speakers who provide no racial, gender, or ideological diversity," Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement on Monday. "In so doing, the commission has made clear that they do not represent the diverse voices of Americans who care about voting but is instead focused on providing a platform for the extremist views of those who support voter suppression."

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THE LAST FIREWALL AGAINST THE LIES

Independent media has become the last firewall against government and corporate lies. Yet, with frightening regularity, independent media sources are losing funding, closing down or being blacked out by Google and Facebook. Never before has independent media been more endangered. If you believe in Common Dreams, if you believe in people-powered independent media, please support our critical Winter campaign now and help us fight—with truths—against the lies that would smother our democracy. Please help keep Common Dreams alive and growing.

Further

With evidence growing that prayer will not stop bullets from killing school children, the kids themselves are stepping up to be the grownups in the room and say the NRA and their fucking guns must go. Just down the road from the latest slaughter, they walked out of class and held livid, poignant signs declaring it's time to protect our kids, not their guns. The chorus swells. Vote all the blood-soaked lackeys out.